Beware The Campus Police

geisler writes: "According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, a professor at Virginia Tech had her computer seized so that university police could try to track down someone who emailed her. She was denied the chance to backup before the computer was taken, and there seems to be some differences in stories between her and the authorities."

Comments

Who said professors are smart?

[whoda]

Quote: "Going by the logic of those cops, the university can confiscate basically any documents stored in our offices (as we use office paper), confidential letters (on official letter pads) and e-mail messages (university software, again), and tap into our phone messages (on the phone machines) as well: without any specific formal legal mandate or explanation or prior notice or warrant." NO SHIT. Anything you do at work(or working @ home) while using your employers property is considered owned by your employer, and you are not entitled to an expectation of privacy while using it. I wonder what these idiots think of the DMCA?

Re:BYOC

[software_non_olet]

And when you are using public streets your privacy is lost and you become public property?

When I go to a college toilet, they have the right to make their videos, because I could be vandalizing their property or use the paper for my personal (as opposed to official) needs?

Come on, get your priorities right. Property is NOT topping everything else - except if we make it into that.

Re:Bahhh!

[eXtro]

She may have been concerned about revealing discussions of past rapes, but those discussions shouldn't have been on a university computer or via email. She showed concerned but also poor judgement.

You're trusting a whole lot of people with confidential information if you're storing it on somebody elses machine or filesystems. You've got to trust the cleaning staff not to touch the machine, you've got to trust the system administrators not to search through the email and you've got to trust that students aren't going to break in searching for next weeks exam.

I've experienced two of the above things happening: A system administrator searched through my email to find out if there was something going on between myself and a girl at the university. He caught royal shit for it (I kept noticing that it never said I had new mail when I logged in even though I had new (to me) mail). A fellow student broke into a professors office, searched the file cabinets and his laptop for exams (he was never caught - he brought it up over beer years later)

Re:Bahhh!

[Bouncings]

This is different. First of all, owning something does not give you unlimited access to it. My land lord cannot summarily inspect my apartment. If I lease a car, Toyota can't take it back at any given time. Ownership alone is not justification, by any means.

Secondly, the police weren't just doing their jobs, they were doing their jobs poorly. Typically campus police are the worst of the police force and have authority issues. They were investigating ONE EMAIL and needed her entire computer? That's not very reasonable. Does your ISP take your computer away to investigate an email? No.

If I sound biased, it's because I am. I've observed that campus police don't have real jobs for a reason. Anyone who spends five minutes with one of these people cannot retain respect for them, IMHO.